Dallas Police: Unarmed Man Wanted Police to Kill Him

Dallas police say 32-year-old Tony Manchaca shot to death by five officers had a history of drug use and mental issues and wanted police to kill him. (Published Monday, Nov 8, 2010)

Deputy Chief Craig Miller said Manchaca had visited a Davis Street taco stand earlier that morning and asked the clerk to call police to report a man with a gun.

The description he gave of the armed man was his own.

When officers arrived, Miller said Manchaca told them he had been high on drugs for the past three days and repeatedly told them he had assaulted police before and would do so again.

"He tells the officers that he has a gun. He tells the officers that he is going to shoot one of the officers if they don’t shoot him," Miller said.

Officers reported that Manchaca reached for his waist band where he told them the gun was hidden and five of them fired at him repeatedly.

"As far as what we know now, what we’ve learned over the last 24 hours concerning his mental state and where he was, where he’d been, his drug involvement, the officers certainly weren’t privy to that," said Miller.

Miller said Manchaca was released from drug and mental health treatment on November 3rd and that his family told them other things about his behavior in the hours prior to the incident.

"That leads us to the belief that this was planned on his part," Miller said.

Civil rights activist Rev. Ronald Wright said police still should have been able to subdue the unarmed man without killing him.

"And if these officers are not indicted, then you’ve opened the door, and it’s like open season for police officers to kill men of color," Wright said.

Dallas NAACP President Juanita Wallace attended a Monday afternoon police briefing on the incident and said after she had heard what police had to say, she had no complaints for them about how this incident was handled.